Hold Congress Accountable

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Members of Congress have only a few weeks before they go home and learn whether voters want them to return to Washington or stay put. Though they have much to do between now and Election Day, Congress and the president need to correct three dangerous errors they made that are threatening America’s health care. Mistake #1: Crippling Patient Access to Medical Savings Accounts.

In the current debate over auto choice insurance reform, a formidable critic of the proposal now before Congress has emerged in George Priest of the Yale Law School. Professor Priest, who carries impressive credentials as a market-oriented legal scholar, recently called the federal auto choice bill a "lemon" in a widely noticed Wall Street Journal op-ed. On September 1 he reiterated his critique in a speech delivered at The Heritage Foundation that was televised nationwide on C-SPAN.

Last month, Lady Margaret spoke and the House moved. The remarks of Great Britain’s former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to the World Congress on Information Technology reinforced the idea that information is an essential component of freedom. As such, it should not be heavily taxed.

If you haven’t heard of the "Gore tax," you’re probably missing an important battle over the nature of American democracy and the American economy. The battle has two fronts and the public is losing on both. On one front, the methodical centralization of power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats moves forward. On the other, the burdening of our economy continues. Here are the details of the current skirmish:

America’s health care system is the finest in the world, yet American patients increasingly face higher costs, fewer choices and greater rationing of medical care. A recent news item describes how politicians typically address these problems: Democrats are often more willing to spend money on new or existing government programs and to regulate the insurance market, while Republicans usually prefer to use the tax code as an instrument of social policy.1

Universal service subsidies keep the price of telecommunications service in hard-to-reach and high-cost areas on par with the price of service to inexpensive areas. Substantial reform for this system of wealth transfers is now politically viable. All universal service reform proposals should begin by facing the following economic reality: Consumers pay for subsidies. With this proposition in mind, the policy benchmarks that follow can be utilized to measure reform proposals.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has been an agent of tremendous change. New regulatory burdens, repeating cycles of litigation and few observable benefits to consumers have been its progeny. All of that is about to become history. An agile long-distance company with a ferocious appetite for new customers is prepared to defy Washington regulators.

Every high school civics student knows that two-thirds of the U.S. Senate must ratify any treaty before it becomes law. However, the Clinton administration is attempting to bypass the Constitution, encouraging state and local governments to implement the Kyoto Protocol, the recently-negotiated global warming treaty, before submitting it to the Senate.

After months of waiting, Council of Economic Advisors member Janet Yellen has revealed the administration’s cost estimates of the Kyoto Protocol. She claims that the cost of the agreement to the average American family would be no more than $110 annually.1 This figure, however, remains controversial and differs greatly from the analyses of responsible economic forecasting firms, such as WEFA, Inc., that put the impact to American families at $2,700.2

Every high school civics student knows that two-thirds of the U.S. Senate must ratify any treaty before it becomes law. However, the Clinton administration is attempting to bypass the Constitution, encouraging state and local governments to implement the Kyoto Protocol, the recently-negotiated global warming treaty, before submitting it to the Senate.